This is a bit of a random post, it might seem a bit boring but hopefully it might end up being helpful!

Recently i've been having a bit of a weird time, being made redundant twice in the space of two months really knocked my confidence and a few other personal things have made the past few months a bit hard to handle. Now I have a new job and am hoping things will start to turn around a bit, so I decided to give my blog a bit of a refresh! I am absolutely hopeless with HTML and things like that, so I had a quick look around on google and found an amazing guide to helping with personalising buttons/widgets on a blog. You can find the link here, it is so easy to use and is a good way of using your own small design ideas and personalising your blog! Not all of the buttons I wanted were available, so I just changed the colour of the standard badges on Photoshop and voila!

I'm really pleased with the way it has worked (if your a graphics wiz, humour me on this small achievement!) If anyone else decides to give it a go then let me know i'd love to see how you personalise the buttons or your blog space!

This week has been a very exciting one! Friday was my last day at my job in Topshop and to be honest it was a bit of a relief, now i've finished there I can tell you guys I didn't really enjoy the job. The people were really nice, and was ok when I had a delivery or visual merchandising to, but on the whole I didn't find being a concession manager challenging enough. So, after finishing I had a nice weekend off and an interview on Tuesday, I was fully expecting to go back to being unemployed for a while but if you follow me on twitter you will already know that I got a new job straight away! It's for a Bristol based social media company who handle all the social media channels for fashion and beauty companies and I will be taken on to manage my own accounts and assist with the launch of a blogger affiliation program (which I will definitely being involving you guys in!) It's really exciting and a little bit daunting because unbelievably i've never actually had a full time job before! I think it will take me a while to get used to getting up in the morning haha but it will be nice to have regular money and be paid to do something that I love. Of course it should make blogging a bit easier because I will have more of a routine and working with other people who have a passion for social media means I can get them to do my outfit shots for me!

In other news I have gone a bit Motel Rocks crazy and bought a few items from the website recently including this lovely Amy Square Eyes Print Skirt. I really love it, I was worried about the shape because i'm very conscious of having big hips, but it's actually really comfortable and I don't think it looks that bad! I've been teaming with plain black or white t shirts or jumpers or cobalt blue which is my favourite colour at the moment! I'm also wearing some new heeled chelsea boots in this post which are basically a copy of the Topshop Allegra boot and only cost me £20 from eBay! Sorry about my squinting little eyes in this picture, the sun was so bright and I do look a bit weird!

I hope everyone is having a nice week and looking forward to the weekend!

It's once again time for my blogger of the month, albeit it a bit late and this month i've chosen Lucy from Fine and Bambi (used to be Champagne Diamond). Lucy is another person I met through Motel and was one of the other bloggers who inspired me to start my own blog. I fell in love with her blog because she shares my love of cats and immediately I wanted to get my hands on one of the cat print skirts from her own big cartel shop! I also loved her grungy style and liked the way she wore Fred Perry polos tucked into girlie skater skirts, dungarees and the way her tattoos toughen up her pretty dresses.

Lucy seems like someone who doesn't follow trends, she knows what she likes and has a massive obsession with Topshop, something else we have in common! Her style is really relaxed and I like how she always posts pictures of her beautiful cat Lana on her blog and instagram. I have ended up buying a few things after seeing them on Lucys' blog, my favourite of which is the Topshop black pinafore, something I fell in love with as soon as I saw her wearing it, and love seeing how Lucy styles it.

Apart from having awesome style Lucy is a really nice girl who i've spoken to through social networking, and she looks SO much like Alexa Chung it is ridiculous!

Let me know if you also love Lucys' blog or if this is a new one for you, I love how this blogger of the month introduces bloggers to new bloggers!

As it has been such a long time since i've written a post I thought I would come back with a classic wish list! I feel so guilty about my lack of blogging, i've been really busy with my job and have had hardly any access to the Internet which has been driving me a little bit crazy! Now however I am back, and have several posts lined up for this week :)

As I mentioned in my last post I was made redundant again so I have been spending quite a bit of time trying to find a new job (which is a horrible process!) Career wise I really want to get into fashion marketing and promotion and basically do what I did in my internship as a paid job, but living outside of London does make this quite difficult. I've spent a lot of time looking for fashion companies based in Bristol and there are very few so I've decided to try and get a job with any kind of PR, marketing or communications company to get experience and a foot in the door! There's quite a lot of marketing companies in Bristol but it's the old problem of you can't get a job without experience but you can't get experience if no one will give you a job. I have thought about doing another 6 month internship so I can make sure I have at least a years part time experience but again positions are limited in Bristol. If anyone has any advice or has been in a similar position feel free to share your experience!

Anyway enough negativity how nice are all these items! I am loving cobalt blue, denim and tartan at the moment and as always paisley is one of my favourite prints. It's the start of a new season which always means new clothes and I can't wait to start snapping up my summer wardrobe! Remember you can use the code 'sophiepalms' at the Motel online checkout for 20% off! This week i'm having some gel nails done too so make sure you check out my instagram (sophiepalmer) to see them, i'm pretty excited to not have to worry about chipped nail varnish! Hope everyones had a nice weekend :)